Inked

to do with a psychotic old woman who was part demon, who murdered, who believed herself to be both victim and predator. She had taken a fucking knife and cut the skin off her body. God only knew what else she had done in the past sixty years.
    Dek and Mal were heavy in my hair. I looked for the others, and found them arrayed around the room, bathed in the fluorescent glow of the long bulb arranged in the wall panel above the Black Cat’s head. Raw and Aaz ate popcorn as they stared at the old woman. Zee perched at the bottom of the bed, his claws bunched up in the covers surrounding her feet. Watching her solemnly.
    Maybe she felt his attention. She opened her eyes, and stared right at him. Showed no fear. Just that faint smile, which shifted from sweet to cold, to cruel.
    “Your highness,” she rasped mockingly.
    “Cat,” whispered Zee. “Miserable Cat. Nothing left but threads.”
    Gold glinted again in her eyes, but stronger, brighter. Hot with fury. Grant stiffened, and in two strides I was back at the bed.
    “You should have killed me then,” she said, trying to sound threatening, though the effect was little more than an angry, bitter whine. “But you both were too weak .”
    I could have said something about mercy. I could have told her that she had been an innocent, and that the formerly possessed should be given a chance to start over. But I looked into those golden eyes, fading even now into dull human brown—glazing over with forgetfulness and confusion—and kept my mouth shut. Mercy, again. Mercy, me.
    I snapped my fingers at the boys, and they fled into the shadows. All of them, except Zee. I said to Grant, “Can she harm anyone else?”
    “She’s dying,” he said simply. “I can see it all around her. She’s fading. I doubt she’ll last the night.”
    I nodded stiffly, sick to my stomach. Sick to death. I was walking away, again, but I wasn’t going to kill in cold blood. Not like this.
    I met the old woman’s gaze. “Good-bye.”
    “No,” she murmured, brow crinkling with confusion. “Not yet. I didn’t finish. I didn’t finish with you. Wanted to punish…her grandchild. Punish her .”
    “You punished yourself,” I replied, and left the hospital room.

    GRANT and I went to my mother’s apartment on Central Park. Everything was dusty. The white sheets that covered the furniture had turned gray. The windows were filthy. The air was cold and smelled faintly of mildew. But the electricity and water worked—paid for each month by one of the law firms that had overseen my mother’s affairs since her murder.
    In the closet I found clothes wrapped in plastic. I found a locked chest full of guns. A box crammed with cash and precious jewels. And in the kitchen cupboards, Spam. Along with two forks.
    “I feel like royalty,” Grant said.
    I tried to smile. Around us, Raw and Aaz were tumbling along the hardwood floors, tossing Dek and Mal through the air like spears—making the serpentine demons squeal with delight. I looked for Zee. I walked through the apartment, thinking of the last time I had been here with my mother. Wondering if Jean had ever come back.
    I felt Zee watching me before I saw him. I stood at the window, gazing out at Central Park. Waiting to hear what he had to say. Knowing part of it already.
    “Old Cat dead,” he finally rasped. “Took care of it.”
    I had thought he would. I searched myself for regret, and found none. “Did she suffer?”
    Zee climbed onto the wide sill. “Not in sleep.”
    “And the one who shot her? Who killed Samuel and Lizbet? Ernie?”
    An odd glint entered his eyes when I mentioned Ernie’s name, but he shrugged and said, “Different men, different cities. Hired like thugs. Got the scent. Tomorrow, I cut them.”
    Cut them, kill them. I had time to think about that, and decide whether there should be another kind of justice. Human laws, human wheels. Evidence could be planted. Police tipped off.
    I shot him a hard look. “And the rest of it? You could have warned me in time to save lives.”
    He dug his claws into wood beneath him. I noticed other gouge marks, older and just as deep. “Old mother needed you. Needed you in order to…change. Be better. Stronger. Pivotal. No you around, she go on. Never look back. Black Cat get strong and stronger. Children die early. More children after that.”
    “She would have done something,” I protested, though a small part of me wondered if that was true. “She would have fought